Kashmiri after Kashmiri & many of their supporters are pointing out the hypocrisy of Indian liberals holding up placards of ‘Black lives matter’ whilst supporting the brutal occupation & lockdown of Kashmir. Nationalism makes you stupid but the problem is more insidious when it creates such a chasm of cognitive dissonance. When I first began writing about the Kashmiri struggle, hundreds of my FB friends who were Indian liberals & socialists went ballistic & became so vituperative & aggressive in their language & so insistent in their objections that I had to block them. Their heads are stuffed full of Islamophobic treacheries that portray the Kashmiri freedom struggle as ‘Pakistani-trained terrorists’. Their nationalism makes the development of an anti-colonial movement in India almost impossible & the suffering of Kashmiris unimaginable.
Building Kashmiri solidarity around the world can put political pressure & help educate the blunt minds of so many Indian liberals who cannot call themselves human rights activists whilst they support the occupation of Kashmir even if they hold the biggest banners proclaiming ‘Black lives matter’. So do Kashmiri lives matter.
Monthly Archives: September 2020
Trump has ordered the Pentagon to put military police on alert for deployment to Minneapolis to ‘restore order’. We know the drill. The purpose is overwhelming martial force against unarmed peaceful civil rights protesters, not stopping the arsonists or ending violence against the Black community.
May 31, 2020
Another protester demanding justice for George Floyd in one of the protests in Berlin, London, & Copenhagen.
(Photo from TRT World Now; European city not identified, posted May 31, 2020)
We’re supposed to feel assured that the FBI is investigating the murder of George Floyd. The FBI under Obama’s tenure investigated the August 2014 police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri & concluded in an 86-page report that there was insufficient evidence to charge the police officer with murder. The FBI under Trump’s tenure will likely find, just like the Minneapolis medical examiner, that George Floyd was responsible for his own murder. If we want justice for George Floyd & are committed to putting an end to this modern form of lynching, then we must support the Black community in building a new civil rights movement that will not compromise on the civil, democratic, & human rights of Blacks.
“Boy you’d think a country that can equip every cop like a soldier could equip every doctor like a doctor.”
–LA Times business editor Jeff Bercovici @jeffbercovici
One thing that binds Blacks to Palestinians & Kashmiris is that Israeli & Indian forces also kill unarmed people with impunity & never face justice.
#StandWithTheBlackCommunity.
#StandWithPalestinians
#StandWithKashmiris
A few years ago, a white American guy friended me & immediately began lecturing & talking down to Kashmiris. When I told him to back off, he unfriended me (thank God). Now, he’s writing condemnatory jeremiads about the looting & arson in Minneapolis as if the Black community has morphed into terrorists & arsonists. Those who speak plainly would call that white supremacy. White people don’t get to lecture the oppressed on how to fight their struggles unless they want to be exposed as a horse’s ass.
Posted May 30, 2020
Trump has ordered the Pentagon to put military police on alert for deployment to Minneapolis to ‘restore order’. We know the drill. The purpose is overwhelming martial force against unarmed peaceful civil rights protesters, not stopping the arsonists or ending violence against the Black community.
This report about the death of 12-year-old Basim Aijaz in the Indian Army siege of Nawakadal, Srinagar will break your heart. He was a beloved only child & his mom & dad are bereft.
https://longform.storiesasia.org/he-was-like-a-flower-kashmir-shootout-costs-mother-her-preteen-son?
An important article about how the occupying army targets Kashmiri women.